IN 1897 INVERCARGILL had a population of nearly 11,000; Bluff a further 1100. An event such as the liquidation of the biggest merchant enterprise, employing several hundred people—which was followed soon after by the collapse of Walter Guthrie and Co., a Dunedin-based merchant enterprise trading in Southland—disrupted many lives. Ward’s trading partners, his clients and his previous financial backers alike all reeled in the aftershocks, and the Invercargill commercial community felt further tremors as Ward and Lee Smith moved in and out of banks trying to find short and long term accommodation. By the end of the year the immediate action surrounding the liquidation of the J. G. Ward Farmers’ Association and the bankruptcy of its managing director was slowing down. Before the end of 1899 it was clear that the shortfall of receipts from the lengthy liquidation process would only be about £6000.1 Largely as a result of Ward’s personal efforts the entire debt to the London companies was paid off during 1899, and some of the money called up from shareholders of the association in 1897 could be repaid as well. These facts in themselves caused Ward to believe until the end of his life that liquidation of the association had more to do with political spite than commercial imperatives. The association’s books were finally closed in December 1901,2 and on 1 May 1906 Ward secured court permission to have the books destroyed as he sought to erase records of the trauma of 1895–7.
Back from his sabbatical and in a less judgmental frame of mind, Mr Justice Williams put the seal on the public part of the liquidation process when on 11 March 1898 he rejected a petition by Thomas Fleming, an Invercargill flour miller, to have the association’s liquidators bring a prosecution against Ward and Fisher for fraud over the books of accounts. Fleming sought to have the costs of such prosecution borne by the liquidators, but Williams ruled that it was unfair for any as yet unsatisfied creditors to have to shoulder the costs of a private vendetta. Williams pointed out that it was still open to any shareholder to mount a private action, but all the recent publicity about the vast legal costs that Ward had already incurred meant that no one was game to pursue Ward and Fisher down the narrowing path that remained open.3
The events of 1895–7 shaped the future lives of many of those involved in, and even on the periphery of, the Ward Farmers’ Association. John Fisher shouldered most of the public blame for the faults in administration of the association during its short career. He parted company with Ward after years of unswervingly loyal service. He spent time in Australia, and on returning devoted more energy to Presbyterian church affairs. He moved to Otautau where he became town clerk and editor of the Otautau Standard4 G. A. Birch, formerly Invercargill branch manager of the Colonial Bank, had a less happy time. Transferred to Timaru at the end of 1895, he was unable to escape a degree of odium arising from the Supreme Court examinations of July 1897. He was later relieved of his duties by the Bank of New Zealand on the grounds of ‘ill health’.5 John Sinclair, former mayor of Invercargill and member of the fundraising committees for Ward, had even less luck. On 5 April 1898 he petitioned for bankruptcy. Among the creditors to whom he owed money was the J. G. Ward Farmers’ Association. The creditors allowed him to keep his furniture and his bicycle.6 Sinclair’s fate was shared by many former clients of the association as the liquidators pressed on with their duties. Throughout 1898 there was a steady stream of bankruptcies in Invercargill, as many of the former clients of the association were brought down by the series of decisions made by Mr Justice Williams in 1896–7.
Had it not been for the fact that Ward’s party was still in office the situation could have been much worse. Ward was able to use influence to help some and punish others. Three out of four of Ward’s fellow directors of the association were given appointments by the Liberal Government. One, Alfred Baldey, was appointed to the Southland Land Board and became a Legislative Councillor in 1903. Another became a district valuer and a third was made Inspector of Mines for Otago and Southland. Lee Smith was also rewarded: the Yorkshireman who stood so resolutely by Ward became a Legislative Councillor in 1898. Seddon worked hard for Ward who, in turn, had been his loyal lieutenant both at the time of the succession and in the subsequent controversies with Stout.7 Loyalty to colleagues is the sine qua non of survival in politics. Seddon understood this well, which is one reason why he lasted as long as he did.
Mr Joshua Strange Williams, on the other hand, suffered for his judicial rigidity. By the time Sir James Prendergast signalled his intention in 1898 to retire as Chief Justice the following year, Williams was the senior puisne judge. In the ordinary course of events he stood a good chance of elevation. But the position has always been in the personal gift of the Prime Minister and Seddon had no cause to favour Williams, especially when by appointing Stout, who was experiencing his own financial difficulties with the collapse of Walter Guthrie and Co., he could permanently remove a political thorn from his side. Williams remained the senior judge in the Otago-Southland region until 1914, when he retired after almost forty years’ service. The Liberal Government, despite his work with the Arbitration Court, gave him a wide berth; Williams was not knighted until 1911 when to have ignored him any longer might have caused controversy. He continued to play the money market on the side. As an interesting footnote, Williams lent £4000 in 1904 to two people who bought a property in the Tuturau district that had formerly been in the hands of the official liquidator of the J. G. Ward Farmers’ Association.8
Bluff waterfront, 1900.
For Ward the events of 1895–7 were the ‘supreme crisis’ in his life.9 During the twenty-eight months between his arrival back from London in 1895 and his discharge from bankruptcy he experienced unremitting personal stress that also weighed heavily on his mother, wife and children. Not only were strangers in and out of the house valuing assets, but the status of the guarantees given to Ward by his mother were often mentioned in court hearings and were the subject of interviews and correspondence by bank officers assessing Ward’s affairs.10 Jock McKenzie believed Theresa and the children suffered throughout, and that the crisis accelerated the decline in Hannah Ward Barron’s health; she was spending much of her time in bed by April 1898.11 Ward’s financial reputation seemed to have been destroyed, and despite talk of a political comeback the reality appeared distant. And yet Ward was surrounded by family and friends who believed passionately in his cause. He still had his home in Bluff, as well as several other properties, thanks to those who were prepared to give him another chance.12 Above all, at forty-one, Ward had good health. He was beginning to lose hair and was somewhat tubby if not fat. But he had not grown soft. Indeed, he was bent upon vindicating himself.
As Ward sought to piece his life together again, the most striking feature is the extent to which he retraced his earlier career path. His first move was to immerse himself once more in Bluff’s affairs. On 16 November 1897 it was reported that Ward, ‘having received a largely signed requisition’, had decided to contest the Bluff mayoral election.13 Four days later he was back in his old position as organiser of the Bluff Regatta for the new year, producing ‘the most successful’ regatta ever held, according to the press.14 The decision to seek the mayoralty again is a little difficult to understand. As MHR for Awarua and a member of the Harbour Board he scarcely needed the office. He had proved often enough that he could get votes out of Bluff, having received more than 80 per cent at the recent by-election. The mayoralty could add nothing to his mana in the region; indeed it could possibly damage it. Old friends and allies had been running municipal affairs for years now, always deferring to Ward, whose progress at the national level had been viewed as partly theirs, partly the town’s. An old school friend, Sam Nichol, had declared his intention to contest the mayoralty some weeks before Ward’s announcement and seems to have been genuinely amazed by the competition that suddenly materialised. Ward and his small band of ‘singularly indiscreet admirers’ persisted, however, and in the process drove a wedge down the middle of Ward’s usual support in Bluff. On 25 November, after a day of very hard work, Bluff’s pre-eminent citizen squeaked home against Nichol by 113 to 110 in what was a small poll. The Times labelled the decision to stand ‘an egregious blunder’,15 and in the sober reflection of the day after Ward probably agreed. Most of 1898 was spent patching up the wounds which this piece of impetuosity inflicted.
Local body affairs tied Ward to Bluff again, which had its compensations. The family was growing up. Three children were at school in Bluff and Cyril was at St Patrick’s College in Wellington. There was a chance for togetherness that parents and children had not known previously. There was time, too, for Ward’s mother. Hannah Ward Barron had always stood proudly by her favourite son. She continued to take a close interest in his rehabilitation and was always ready to proffer advice. In July 1898 she was well enough to visit Willie in Dunedin, and the last letter that she dispatched to Ward, who was in Wellington, is worth quoting in full. It lacked punctuation and the spelling was shaky, but the purity of intention cannot be questioned:
My dear Joseph
I received your letter also a visite from Theresa & the children Looking well the weather is not so fine snowing buit is expected to clearer up to morrow it is not coald Vincent and Gladstone are in great glee about goeing to Wellington I am sure the change will do them the world of good as I see old Gladstone is verrey thin he is growing big it may be all for the best for you to let the Bluff House it will be better for you to have them with you you will be more comefortabel when you are all together I hope Cyril is liking his school it is a grand change for the child I watch the papers & I think it will be a long session I will beg of you try & not loose your temper there is no doubt it is verry trying but do try & keep cool I will ask of you to comply with one littel Prayer everey morning or army time you are goeing to the House to say as you are goeing allong Jesus Marey & Joseph help me you will not fail as I can tell you the have stood by you & help you in everything for your benefit with fond love God Bless you from your Mother16
A few days later she had a stroke. An invalid chair was purchased for her, and on 24 August she made her will. She lingered another few weeks at the home of her daughter, Mina Tipping, but early in November an attack of bronchitis led on to pneumonia. The family gathered quickly, Willie arriving in from Dunedin and Joseph racing home from Parliament, which fortunately had gone into recess. Late on the evening of 10 November her heart failed.17 Dr Torrance, Bluff’s local physician and later mayor, signed the death certificate. Three days later at a simple Catholic ceremony conducted by Father McGrath and attended by a big crowd from all over Southland, some of whom had come in by special train, Hannah was buried in the Bluff Cemetery on the hill, high above the town.18 The most important influence in Ward’s early life had now gone.
Hannah left an estate worth about £5000 consisting of the Club Hotel, which had been run by a licensee over recent years, her home nearby and one invalid chair. The estate was divided evenly between Mina, Willie and Joseph, although Joseph’s share was left in trust for his children. With creditors still about, Ward had instructed Hannah’s solicitor to ensure that he did not benefit personally.19
Meantime Ward was hard at work rearranging his finances and reassembling the essentials of his merchant’s business. Between Christmas 1897 and the opening of Parliament on 24 June 1898 he left Southland for no more than hours at a time. First he had to rearrange enough securities for the Bank of New South Wales to back the Invercargill and Suburban Tramways Co., which he jointly owned with Henderson and Batger.20 Reviving the merchant’s business took much time. Henderson and Batger had been nursing the shipping and other agencies, as well as the railway siding concessions during 1897. These brought in some commissions. Money was needed, however, to revive the grain business, as well as to pay back the £6000 short-term loan he had received from friends at the time of his discharge from bankruptcy.21 The Bank of New South Wales was very cautious about Ward. At first it refused to have anything to do with any personal business account in Ward’s name.22 Commercial activity conducted by a company or under some other name would be viewed more favourably. After initial difficulties as Ward tried to play head office off against the local manager leaving neither sure what the other had agreed to,23 the bank agreed to lend £7000 to Theresa secured by mortgages on properties Ward had bought back from the Official Assignee. Business was slow in Invercargill, as the bank’s inspectors kept pointing out. Bank officers soon decided that if Ward was determined to rebuild, then they wanted some of the action. Ward was obliged to give the bank his life insurance policy. He was asked for a personal guarantee from his mother who was still alive at the time, but she was ‘too ill’ to sign.24 Instead, personal guarantees were given by several of Ward’s friends. They were Nicholas Johnson, a local hotelkeeper, and J. D. McGruer, an Invercargill councillor, who ran a drapery and menswear store on the corner of Dee and Esk Streets where Ward had been a regular customer. The faithful Lee Smith, and J. Passmore of Dunedin, who was Smith’s fellow director of Donaghy Rope and Twine Co. in Dunedin, each gave guarantees, and last, but not least, was Jock McKenzie. The total came to £3000.25
This was only the first stage of Ward’s financial restructuring. Throughout the stressful days of 1896–7 he kept in close contact with Robert Anderson, the association’s accountant, who took over from Fisher as general manager early in 1896. Anderson was a tall, youthful Presbyterian, ten years Ward’s junior, who developed the reputation of being a shrewd, careful businessman. Together they registered a new company called J. G. Ward and Company in 1898. Ward was its managing director, Anderson the general manager. On 25 March 1898 Theresa purchased the freehold of the former association headquarters in The Crescent and another mortgage, this one from the Public Trust Office, was secured on it.26 A few months later another application was made to the Bank of New South Wales by J. G. Ward and Co., in the names of Ward and Anderson, for a further £10,000 ‘to carry on business as wool and grain brokers and general merchants’. Christophers of the bank commented to his superiors, who were watching Ward’s activities with eagle eyes: ‘Mr Ward’s political and commercial career has been fully discussed in the press. I think he is not so bad as he is painted, nor worse than other well-known and respected businessmen. He is shrewd, temperate and economical in his living …. I think Mr Ward’s speculative and plunging days are over and that it is his intention to see that the company is conducted on safe and good business lines.’ Christophers promised to exercise due care to see that the company’s limit was not exceeded, adding, as a wry afterthought, that any bills presented for discount would be ‘well-scmtinised’. Like bank managers before him, Christophers had fallen under the spell of Ward’s charm and optimism. He told his superior that the account ‘will be a very profitable one and Mr Ward’s great popularity in the district and influence with the Government should be the means of bringing fresh business to the Bank’. While some of the old Ward can be seen through Christophers’ report, the most notable feature of the application was that the account of J. G. Ward and Co. was in credit at the point of application. No stronger evidence could be supplied that a new Ward was in business.27
As with the previous loan to Theresa the bank requested guarantees from reputable citizens and these were forthcoming. Jock McKenzie guaranteed another £1000; J. F. M. Fraser, a Dunedin solicitor who took over as Crown Prosecutor when B. C. Haggitt died in 1898, and who performed much of the legal work for the Government Advances to Settlers department, guaranteed £500, as did a farmer from Lime Hills called Mortimer Hishon. Joint and several guarantees totalling another £5000 were given by Theresa and by a group of Ward’s old friends, Alfred Baldey, John Looney, Duncan King, David McKenzie, Charles Stewart and Alexander Pyper, all of them farmers from Southland. J. G. Ward and Co., with a staff of two, opened its doors on 2 December 1898. Its private railway siding was back in operation and it was soon advertising in the old style; its first special was Lawe’s Finest Sheep Dip. In its first year of operation the company made a profit of £209. The Bank of New South Wales inspector reported back to head office on 30 September 1899 that Ward’s business was ‘believed to be doing well’.28
Between 1898 and 1908, when Ward’s interest was formally transferred back to him from Theresa, the Bank of New South Wales lent the company a total of £48,000. Frequent revaluations of securities took place, and new ones were added. Branches of the company opened in Gore in 1900 and in Dunedin in 1903 under the management of Theresa’s brother-in-law, Theodore Boys. As Ward’s political fortunes revived as well, the bank waived its earlier requirement of guarantees from reputable citizens.29 In 1900 Ward helped Nelson Brothers to dispose of their interest in Ocean Beach to agents of the Federal Steam Navigation Company of London30 and it was not long before J. G. Ward and Co. were purchasing, killing and freezing meat for export, some of it going to London, some to feed the troops fighting in the South African war. The company won a tender to send oats too, and did well out of the war. The Invercargill office made a profit of £6400 in 1903–4, while the operation at Gore added another £2200.31 Ward’s business was operating on a very substantial basis. By this time, however, he was only on the periphery of the company bearing his name. He attended directors’ meetings but took no more than expenses from the company. Day-to-day management was in the hands of Anderson and his staff.
Clambering up the slippery political pole again required the same stamina. The Seddon Ministry was weakened by the appointments made after the election of 1896. ‘Two men and a row of dummies’ was how one observer characterised the Cabinet in 1897.32 With Seddon away, and McKenzie’s health giving trouble to the point where he had ‘a nasty breakdown’ at the end of the session of 1897 and was wanting to retire,33 the Prime Minister found himself carrying most of the burden of government during 1898. Seddon, however, was in no rush to return Ward to office. He consulted his former Treasurer over the budget of 1898 and encouraged him to speak on behalf of the Ministry in debates. Ward gave some of his most interesting speeches during the session. He defended the Wages Protection Bill, which was designed to protect workers’ wage packets from arbitrary deductions by employers, with the comment: ‘Almost every class in this country—the commercial class to a very large extent—is protected by legislation; the shipowners, the merchants, the landowners, the professional classes, all classes, in fact, are more or less protected by legislation and I say, therefore, it is very desirable to have the wage earners protected, and by so doing give effect to that which is the desire of the majority of the people of this colony.’34 Coming as it did many years before Walter Nash and the Labour Party talked of protecting all sections of the New Zealand economy, it provides an interesting example of Ward’s view of government as a universal security blanket to be spread fairly across all classes. On the third reading of the Old Age Pension Bill a few weeks later Ward said that it was the duty of the state to make ‘proper provision’ for the aged. He saw the Bill as bold in principle, cautious in practice. It was ‘an experiment’ that future Parliaments would be sure to extend.35
While Ward could always be counted on to defend the Ministry, he sometimes, despite his mother’s advice, revealed sensitivity to barbs about his recent difficulties. When the Bank of New Zealand and Banking Bill, designed to restructure the bank’s board of directors, was debated in August 1898, the discussion quickly degenerated at the hands of Ward’s old parliamentary enemies into a round of assertions and innuendos about Ward’s promissory note of 1895. Ward could stand it no longer. He suddenly treated the House to a lengthy fulmination against his critics, attacked W. R. Cook, the official liquidator of the Ward Farmers’ Association, and told the House that Williams’s refusal to allow the Henderson-Batger purchase had cost Colonial Bank shareholders dearly. But for Williams the bank might well have got back most of the promissory note’s face value.36 Others were tiring of the Ward saga; Walter Carncross, Ward’s old friend, asked plaintively, ‘Are we to listen to the eternal drumming into our ears of the affairs of Mr Ward?’37 Ward himself, however, could not yet put the issue behind him, and Seddon obviously thought it too early to reinstate him to the Ministry. Early in December Ward wrote to the Otago Daily Times pointing out that the paper had adopted a much more friendly attitude to reporting the recent liquidation of Walter Guthrie and Company than it had to his association.38 By this time it was Ward more than anyone else who was keeping his problems before the public.
Ward needed a break, and he knew it. In December 1898, a few weeks after his mother’s death, he quietly surrendered the Bluff mayoralty to John Reed and slipped away without notice to Australia. The trip was part holiday, part business. Ward wanted to reestablish his trading links in Australia. Back in New Zealand he was soon exhibiting a new branding patent which he said he intended taking to London for registration.39 There were other more important reasons for going to London, however. If he was to rebuild his business and political careers then he must take steps to restore the image he had so quickly created in 1895 then smashed in subsequent years, leaving behind a trail of debt to reputable London trading companies. With McKenzie’s help he first tried to persuade Seddon to return him to the Ministry,40 but when he failed to convince his chief he decided to accompany the Minister of Lands to London where he was going for exploratory surgery 41 The two of them left Wellington for Sydney, and then London, early in May 1899.
They arrived early in June 1899. London was on the crest of a speculative wave in the lead up to the South African war. New companies were being floated at an unprecedented rate as Britain prepared for what imperial intriguers hoped would be a short, sharp war against the Boers.42 Ward had prepared carefully for his visit. His aim was to restore his image in the city by paying off Cooper and Nephews Ltd, John Connell and Co., and Robert Brooks and Co., all of them organisations that J. G. Ward and Co. wished to resume trading with. The official liquidators had already paid back some of the debt. If Ward could clear up the residual debt he might well be able to make a political virtue of the fact. He had managed to persuade the official liquidators to part with the as yet unsold 1600 Nelson Brothers shares that he had hoped to dispose of in 1895, but which had been reduced to a virtually worthless asset by the end of that year. Nelson Brothers had gone through a rough patch. Ward, however, knew that things had improved. At the shareholders meeting on 21 February 1899 prospects for the current year were described as very encouraging’.43 The shares had been reduced in value from £10 shares to £8 shares in the meantime, and more were issued. Ward now held 1920 shares. He met his old friend, the recently knighted Sir Montague Nelson, at his office at 15 Dowgate Hill and savoured the bullish mood at head office. He decided to put his shares on the rising market in the hope that the price, currently running at about £4 per share, would improve before he had to leave for home at the end of summer.
Meantime Ward joined the Liberal Club down on the Embankment and made it his base. From there he visited the Commons before it went into recess and attended McKenzie’s operation on 18 July to receive the sad diagnosis that he had cancer of the bladder; while McKenzie would return to New Zealand, he was unlikely to recover. Ward paid two visits to Manchester, where he secured the Southland agency for the Manchester Insurance Co. He became a director of the Colonial Consignment Company, was present at the opening of the company’s cool store on the Canal Bank, and arranged through cables back to the Bank of New South Wales running credit arrangements for grain transactions between Invercargill and Manchester.44 Ward also attended the annual New Zealand dinner that had been set up by Thomas Mackenzie, formerly MHR for Clutha, who was now living in London.
The sharemarket, however, was slow to catch fire. The word ‘irregular’ was much used to describe it early in July, and by early August the Financial Times referred to a ‘general idleness’ in the market. During the next week the market was ‘stagnant and heavy’, and by 10 August was described as ‘depressed’ in tone 45 Shares in the meat trade with a war in the offing kept creeping up, however. On the 11th Ward received an offer of £4.18.9 per share, the highest price offered for Nelson Brothers shares since 1895. He decided to sell, receiving, he later claimed, about £9200 for shares deemed almost valueless two years earlier.46 It was not as much as he would have liked, and certainly less than their face value, but the best price the market could provide.47 Within days Ward paid visits to all three of his creditors in London and, much to their astonishment, wrote cheques for the association’s remaining debt to them, totalling about £6000. On 23 August he despatched £3000 home to Invercargill through the Bank of New South Wales 48 Such was the pleasure of the directors of the three companies who had earlier settled with the official liquidator for a smaller sum, that they decided to send home to Theresa a silver service, a double set of silver-mounted harness and the best carriage they could get in London. The silver was inscribed with an appreciation to Ward for ‘the honourable manner’ in which he had discharged liabilities for which he was strictly not responsible 49
Ward was over the moon. Before leaving for home early in September he made sure that the Financial Times received a florid account of his ‘making good to his creditors’50 and stories designed to put Ward in the best possible light were distributed to several London papers. The Morning Herald, the Daily Chronicle, and the Daily Telegraph all published them, Ward treasuring the reports for Theresa’s clipping book. Just to make certain that New Zealand’s papers did not miss out, Ward arranged with a friend in Manchester, Alfred J. Pease, to post a story from the Manchester Herald in similar vein to the Southland Times. The story, which had been given in miniature at the end of August, was published with embellishments a few days before Ward arrived back in New Zealand on 6 November.51 Before long the beautiful black landau arrived and was quickly described as one of the finest in the country. Ward’s supporters in Awarua presented him with two black horses, Awarua and Ruapuke. The combination was often used by the Wards and also by visiting dignitaries, including the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York in 1901. It was visible evidence that Ward was once again solvent, and even more thoroughly respectable than before.
Liberals who had earlier been keen to distance themselves from Ward were impressed by his achievements in London and by assurances that any remaining New Zealand creditors would also be paid.52 Moreover, the Ministry desperately needed Ward’s services. Cadman had been ill during the session and along with Tommy Thompson, Minister of Justice and Defence, decided to retire at the election. McKenzie was back, but for some time had been trying to persuade Seddon to allow him to retire at the forthcoming election because of his medical condition.53 Seddon successfully used all his powers to persuade him to stay for the time being, but McKenzie extracted a price: Ward had to be brought back. Reconstruction of the Ministry was a constant question raised at political meetings as Seddon went up and down the country throughout 1899. The Prime Minister usually dismissed the conjecture, but on 22 November at a political meeting in Tauranga he told a cheering audience that Ward, who had been ‘wrongly judged’ and whose actions of recent times had ‘proved him an honourable and upright man’, would be restored to the Ministry after the election.54 The announcement was greeted warmly in other quarters. ‘Mr Ward is, beyond question, the most practically able man of his party; he has shown a broad grasp of colonial and even Imperial questions, and a very exceptional capacity as an administrator’, said the Dunedin Evening Star.55
Ward’s campaigning was confined to Southland. He spoke in Wakatipu and Wallace electorates and to only one meeting in Awarua. The speech was a moderate statement of Liberal philosophy and ministerial achievement, concentrating on statistics such as that 3.3 million acres had been settled by 16,700 people in the nine years since the Liberals had come to office. In each speech Ward discussed railways, and in Winton—an unlikely place to preach such a sermon—he dwelt at length on the need to complete the North Island main trunk line. He also expressed his belief that railway rates should be reduced so as to increase patronage.56 Almost certainly he had discussed possible portfolios with Seddon, and the coming vacancy at Railways, with a salary top-up, had been discussed.
Until the last moment Ward had no opponent in Awarua. Then, to the surprise of his electoral committee, a temperance candidate called W. T. Murray declared he would stand against Ward on one issue only, prohibition. In some ways the appearance of such a candidate in Awarua against the son of a publican who was married to the daughter of another, was overdue. Stout had been campaigning on the issue for many years now, and Ward’s next-door neighbour, J. W. Kelly, had successfully embraced the prohibitionist cause in 1896. Two leading teetotallers, Rev. L. M. Isitt and T. E. Taylor, had regularly visited Invercargill in recent years. But 1899 belonged electorally to Seddon. On 6 December Murray won a feeble 660 votes against Ward’s 2279. Ward won 88 per cent of the poll at Bluff, his highest ever, and 90 per cent at Waikiwi and Makarewa. Kelly lost Invercargill to a Government candidate, J. A. Hanan; McNab held the seat of Mataura that he had won the year before in a by-election; and the Government candidate, Michael Gilfedder, retained Wallace for the Government. The Ministry won all along the line. City seats captured in 1896 stayed on side, and several rural constituencies containing sizeable towns joined the Government’s fold.57 Seddon’s caucus contained an embarrassment of riches, lawyers, journalists, unionists, businessmen and run holders. The Liberals represented just about every walk of life in the country. ‘King Richard has got his foot on our necks for three years more’, grumbled the Herald.58
Ward in the black landau given to Theresa by his London creditors in 1899, with the two horses, Ruapuke and Awarua, given by friends.
Seddon announced his new Cabinet line-up a few days later, and they were sworn into office by Lord Ranfurly on 21 December 1899. There amidst several new faces and the ailing McKenzie was Joseph George Ward, Colonial Secretary, Postmaster-General and Minister of Industries and Commerce. A few days later he became Minister of Railways as well. He was Seddon’s deputy and heir apparent. McKenzie was delighted, telling Reeves that Ward’s rehabilitation was ‘very popular’,59 and those like Mark Cohen who had been predicting the end of Ward’s career little more than two years earlier were soon talking of Ward as Seddon’s natural successor.60 It was a remarkable comeback by anyone’s standards, testament to what could—and still can—be achieved in politics by grit, imagination and determination. Even Ward’s enemies such as the Southland Times were prepared to kiss and make up:
Whatever one may think of the incidents in Mr Ward’s past career it must be conceded that he possesses ability far above the common, and that he has the faculty of inspiring people with a belief in such fact. We have never had in Southland a politician who has displayed in such bountiful measure all the qualities that go to make up a popular idol …. As an administrator of a department he has proved himself facile princeps.61
Never again would the Times treat Ward as they had while he was down. It would not be long before they would anoint him as their preferred successor to King Dick.
Despite a certain inevitability about Ward’s restoration to Cabinet he found the actual event an emotional experience. After being sworn into office he dispatched a full, formal and flowery telegram to Theresa who had been his constant champion through troubled times:
After a long battle the time has arrived when positions equal to those which I formerly held in public life have again been resumed. I have had the offer of any portfolios I liked excepting Lands and have been sworn in today …. I feel pleased chiefly because it will enable our children in their future years to treat with contempt any allusions that in the absence of my taking these positions might have been made to them by political enemies. It is more gratifying to me and I am sure will be to you to know that my rejoining the Cabinet is not only done with the full approval of Cabinet but also of the country and it is the more pleasing to me inasmuch as I have never asked anyone, either ministers or anyone else to get me to any positions I now hold. I am leaving tonight and spend Christmas with you all. I send you the first wire after being sworn in. The position of Colonial Secretary has been given me specially because it ranks next to that of the Premier in the constitutional world. Fond love to you all, J. G. Ward.62
The telegram, which Theresa promptly stuck at the front of her second clipping book, is interesting not only for its air of self-justification. It raises the question of why he took that clutch of portfolios. At first he suggests he had almost free choice, and then he says he was ‘given’ the Colonial Secretaryship. It seems likely that lengthy discussion took place with Seddon, and probably with McKenzie as well. The press had been assuming Ward would resume the Treasurership. However, if it was ever offered, Ward probably felt it wise to avoid it so soon after his bankruptcy. Moreover, with Seddon continuing to hold the office Ward knew that he would be doing much of the work while the Prime Minister was out on the stump. The reason for taking the Colonial Secretaryship was as he stated: it marked Ward out as Seddon’s deputy, guaranteed him occasional periods as Acting Prime Minister, and delivered yet another blow at those who had fought so hard to terminate his political career. No doubt Ward spared a thought for Stout, Duthie, Newman and Mr Justice Williams as he boarded the inter-island ferry for home.
An event so meaningful for Ward caused little excitement around the country. Newspapers that noted it made approving noises.63 Most papers, however, were full of stories about the Boer War and several setbacks experienced by the Imperial forces. Ward’s reception when he arrived in Bluff on Christmas Eve was warm, but unspectacular. The public was preoccupied with other things. A wave of jingoism was sweeping the country. The ‘blood of brave Britons’ was being spilled. Invercargill was preparing for a huge patriotic rally. Ward’s personal affairs had long since lost their novelty value. For him and his family a new era, like the new century, was in the offing.
Ward in dinner suit, June 1901 at the time when he was knighted.
